Day 7, 93 to go: Robot PJs and Gnome #1

The first thing I made today was a batch of Ghirardelli brownies.  Nothing special, but a good source of warmth and chocolate in the kitchen (which is also where I sew.)

Just the right size.

Then I whipped up the robot pajamas.  They went really fast.  My sister sent me her kids’ measurements and I am kind of proud that I predicted what size her kids would be now when I cut them out earlier this year.  (I must have cut them out too late for them to get any use out of them last winter.)

I learned that another of my sisters is reading this blog because she guessed the general concept of the tree skirt.  Of course she had an incredibly unfair advantage since she is Zoe’s aunt.

Gnome #1?

This is Zoe.  She loves GNOMES.   No one can really explain why.  She just does.  So she dressed up as a garden gnome for Halloween in this gorgeous costume my sister Barb made for her. (Barb is her mom.)   Zoe is an incredibly creative person.   

Dressing up as a garden gnome is one thing.  Having the leadership skills to convince all your friends to dress up as lawn ornaments is even more impressive, don’t you think?  The group included a Kissing Dutch Girl, Flamingo, Lawn Jockey and best of all, a BVM.  Because no lawn is complete without Our Lady of the Lawn.

So the official name of this design is The Amish Gnomes of Whoville.  Amish because, like Amish dolls, they won’t have faces.  Whoville because it occurred to me that a bunch of gnomes holding hands around a Christmas tree was an awful lot like the big musical number in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. (The Boris Karloff cartoon version, NOT the horror show that involved Jim Carrey. Anyone want to sing along? Dahoo Doris, Fahoo Foraze Welcome Christmas, Christmas day.  Just wanted to make sure it was stuck in your head too if it was gonna be stuck in mine)

There are a total of 21 gnomes who will encircle the tree.  My plan is to make each one different and individual somehow.  This is the first gnome.  She is at the far right end of the skirt. Hopefully my design process will come together better as I work my way toward the front of it.  

Gnome #1

This one is very loosely based on Zoe’s Halloween costume.  Green waist cincher, red hat, braids, white peasant blouse and then a skirt with a kind of miniature PA Dutch print I had in my stash.  I don’t have any yellow in my stash. Or orange.  So I went with the red heart fabric for the apron.  It seemed Christmasy. Hearts are big in German folk art.

So from here until Christmas, you can expect to meet the rest of the Gnome Collective.  If you have any ideas for gnome costumes or tributes, I welcome them.  Should there be a Miss Piggy gnome, for instance?  Or perhaps a Browncoat gnome.  Zoe won’t know what it is, but I will.   Maybe I will include characters from musicals she loves. Wicked, maybe?

Anyhow Grubsneerg, you came the closest.  You want pajama pants or a sleep shirt?

Day 6, 94 to go: Zoe’s Tree Skirt (Part 2)

It matches the thank-you card!

When I opened my email this morning, I discovered that one of my sisters actually reads this blog.  Who knew?  She wanted to make sure I knew what size to make those pjs for her boys—you know, the ones that I didn’t work on yesterday.  So I guess I am going to have to break down and assemble them.   I got a very sweet thank-you note from her sons in the snail mail today. (I had sent them some magic trick decks of cards)

Note to my sister: Hey Martha, this is the fabric I picked out for your kids’ pajamas.  Based on the image on the thank-you card, I am guessing you like it?

I worked on Zoe’s tree skirt again today. I stitched that ginormous rick-rack to it and discovered that I have really good spatial relations skills.  I had about 4 yards of it, which was not enough to put around the outside edge of the skirt as I had originally envisioned.   Yesterday I had pinned it in place to get an idea of how it might fit into the design I had in mind. 

Arbitrarily, I decided to sew it 4 ¾” from the edge.  Not 4 ½”, not 5”.  I have no logical reason that 4 ¾” struck me as right.  I basted the rick-rack in place and discovered I had found the circumference that was just right for the amount of rick-rack I had available.  There was about an inch left over at each end, which was perfect to tuck under to finish the edge.   I could have done math out the wazoo for hours to figure it out.  But it turns out, at least for today, all I needed was to follow my intuition. 

Any guesses?

I also worked on a series of pink sections that I had started making last night.  I stopped when I got tired of the intricate cutting, thinking I probably had another dozen or so to make.   Today I pinned them in place only to discover I had gotten tired of making them just as I'd made the last one I'd need!  I am feeling quite triumphant about my sense of space when it comes to sewing.  I don’t know how I did that, and am wondering if anyone would be impressed if I put that on my resume.  This is what the back looks like today.  You can see the straight line of the basting on the large rick-rack, the curvy stitching along the bottom edge of the rick-rack and then a line of stitching at odd angles above.  Can anyone guess what I am making?

I am in awe of my spatial relations skills today.

How about now from the front?  Any ideas? Please guess in the comments section below. If you guess right, I will whip up a pair of pajama bottoms for you.  I thought up a name for this design—as if it were an artwork on display in a gallery.  I will reveal it tomorrow, along with a sample of one of the pink sections finished.

So far, blogging daily has been really helpful to my getting-through-the-day process.  The discipline was tough to force myself into-both making something every day and then writing about it.  I don’t feel like I have gotten into my writing groove yet, but I do sense I am getting somewhere.   
If you want to read an incredibly entertaining blog, I highly recommend checking the link here to Sharon Wheatley’s blog, My Own Space.  She is married to a guy who went to school with my younger sisters.  She is a Broadway musical actress. He is a music theater professor and music director.  They live in NYC and have two daughters with the most lovely literary names, Charlotte and Beatrix. Sharon writes in the funniest voice and manages to make both the crises and the daily drone of life entertaining, exciting and full of cliffhangers. She is also the author of a book called Til the Fat Girl Sings. How can you not love a book with that title? (And it's really cheap on Amazon right now.)

I love Fleece.  And also shrubbery. Ni!

Apparently today was Felicity’s day to take the watch.  She perched herself in the middle of the table for a while on alert.  Then she crawled into the pile of fabric and took a nice long nap.  She is a big fan of fleece fabric.

As I was finishing up this entry, Fergus jumped up on the table to play with the mouse.  Not a toy mouse.  The computer mouse. I had no idea he understood IT.

Day 5, 95 to go. Tree Skirt (Part 1)

Pajamas didn’t happen today.  I looked at the cut-out pjs and just wasn’t in the mood to zip them together.  Instead, I decided to start on something that has been hanging over me for a couple of years.

When my first niece Katelyn was born, I started a tradition of giving a Christmas ornament to each of my nieces and nephews on Christmas Eve.   I try to find them ornaments that reflect their interests and obsessions.  By the time they graduate from high school, they should have a collection of ornaments that serve as a kind of timeline of the story of their lives. 

To complete their collections, I give them tree toppers in their senior year of high school.  For the following years, I give them other stuff that would complete a tree—lights, plain ball ornaments, a tree skirt...

So I started working on Zoe’s tree skirt today.  This is all I have done so far. This will take a while, but hopefully it will be just right for her when it’s done.  Then I have to do one for Kathryn who is a college freshman… I don’t have that one designed in my head yet.

I didn’t realize just how involved the catlings get in my creative process.  When I put the sewing machine away for the night, Fergus came over to see what I had accomplished so far. 

Thank goodness for his supervision. 

Day 4, 96 to go: Peace Sign PJ Bottoms

Last autumn, I sent care packages to my nieces at college.  I made them chocolate chip cookies and pajama bottoms.  I put the cookies in cute tins and told them they can return the tins to me and I will refill them, but they have not done so.  Oh well.  There are plenty of people who would have gotten the tin right back to me… College kids are just so busy, I guess.

 

One of my nieces told me that when her friend Carleigh heard about the care packages, she was jealous because her aunt never makes her pajamas.  I cut these out last fall, but never managed to stitch them up.  So today’s creation is pajamas for Carleigh.  Hopefully they will fit. All I know is that she is “tiny.”  I figured groovy peace signs should work for most college girls.

I have another pair of pjs already cut out for one of my nephews, so that will probably be next.  I have to find out how much he has grown since I cut them out.  They may go to his younger brother at this point. 

I am still trying to figure out how I can have so many started, but not finished projects around here. Hopefully this 100 days will let me drive down that pile. I think this may be pajama week here.   I really have a lot of flannel picked out for friends and family… It takes up a lot of room…

Oh, and then there is the nightshirt I made for a friend.  I got a new sewing machine and haven’t tried to figure out how it makes buttonholes.  Tomorrow I must learn the buttonhole feature.  That’s all that stands between me and finishing that nightshirt…  What are these psychological roadblocks that keep me from finishing, I wonder?

Day 3, 97 to go. Embroidered tea towel

Stamped Towel waiting for me to  find the floss.

Today’s project was embroidering this tea towel.  Way back in 1870, a fad for the embroidery which came to be known as redwork took hold because a cotton thread called Turkey Red became available.  It was colorfast, so ladies could embroider to their hearts’ content, bleach the heck out of their linens and still have color. Better yet, it was CHEAP.  So everyone could afford it.  Pretty soon, you could buy 6” squares of cotton fabric stamped with an embroidery design for a penny and then spend another penny on the Turkey Red.  The redwork moved from tea towels to quilts with those squares. 

"Limework" Sounds catchy, right?

I think there is something charming and kitschy about the iron-on stamp designs you can get from AuntMartha's.  I came across a set of days-of-the-week kitchen designs featuring cute little bunnies.  (I have a thing about bunnies I blame Peter Rabbit for)  I thought it would be fun to do the set in colors I love—shades of hot pink and lime rather than the traditional red.  (Heaven forbid I do anything the way someone else did it.)

I stamped these a few months ago, but couldn’t find the embroidery floss I had bought for it.  Today I discovered it in its cubbyhole exactly where it should have been (but hiding behind some spray adhesive and turpentine…)  So I stitched this one.  I also started noticing there are a lot of unfinished projects around here that I should really finish.  I came across a cross-stitch I was working in wedgewood blue and dusty rose.  That puts it into the 1986-1990 time period.  Just finish it already.  Those colors should be "in" again soon, along with hunter green and the inevitable country stencilled duckage of the period.

I also remembered today why I end up choosing sewing over all the other things Grandma taught me.  IT GOES FAST.  I can make a pair of pajama bottoms from cutting out the pattern to finish in about an hour and a half.  I can make a dress in a day or less. Everything else seems so tedious and time consuming by comparison.  I got a late start today, but managed to stitch through and finish this one towel.   

Felicity stood watch and/or napped through much of the stitching. Here she comments on her annoyance at being awakened when I finished. 
 

Here is the towel, pressed and hanging with its predecessor.

Day 2, 98 days to go: Polymer Clay Earrings

I thought it would be fun to make earrings with the Clover Market logo to wear when I volunteer at the booth.  

The brief shining moment.

For a brief shining moment, I did have this pair, but one broke.  I made another and then it broke. That tendril is tricky and delicate. But it was actually one of the clover leaves that cracked off first.  (Theoretically, repair is possible with Krazy Glue, but that was not my experience.) So I will make another one before the next market in April. 

 

Good thing I have plenty to make replacements with.

This was the first time I have experimented with polymer clay. These earrings took much longer to make than I had imagined.  Getting the feel for the material, as well as mixing the right shade of green took time, ingenuity and a surprising number of colors

 

Felicity monitors the situation and keeps warm.

Most importantly, I was reminded that cats are born hall monitors and heat seeking missiles.   Felicity felt it was her duty to monitor my activities, although I think this was just an excuse to get close to the warm toaster oven. 

Fergus took the next shift. 

100 Days of Making

Anna Fuhs: Seamstress, Gibson Girl

This is my maternal grandmother, Anna Fuhs Ehrhardt’s 1912 engagement portrait.  She was a dressmaker in Newark NJ at the turn of the last century. I love this dress and need to figure out those sleeves so I can make a copy for myself.  

She often lived with us as I was growing up to help with all the kids. (I got a new baby sister just about every year until I was 9--including the year I got a baby brother too) 

Every night after the littlest ones were bathed and in bed, Grandma would settle into her rocker in front of the tv with us to crochet.  She was always making afghans for her grandkids to take to college or for the new baby great grandchildren as they came along.

She let me help her wind balls of yarn from the groovily colored skeins in her knitting bag.  She taught me to finger-crochet yards and yards of chain stitch which she would sew together into little doll rugs.  Once I developed the coordination, I graduated to using a crochet hook and learned to make granny squares, which were quite fashionable during the initial runs of That Girl and The Partridge Family. (Though Grandma preferred Lawrence Welk.)

As a true Edwardian, Grandma passed on to me the needlework skills that any proper lady should know.  I can embroider, needlepoint, cross-stitch, crochet, knit and sew. Thanks to Grandma, I am fully prepared for the life of an upper class spinster living at Downton Abbey. Sadly, it’s been 100 years and those skills aren’t much called for these days.  I have to make a living and haven’t had time for leisurely daily drawing room embroidery and gossip sessions. 

Downton Abbey's spinsters and the Dowager Countess. 

As I near my own half-century mark, I find myself at a crossroads trying to figure out, (yet again) what I want to be when I grow up.  

I realized toward the end of my most recent job, that I wasn’t using any of my talents, gifts or skills there.  I was basically pimping out my neurosis--Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  I do take some odd comfort in knowing that I can only get by on OCD for a few years.  

Considering my undergraduate majors in Theology and Theater, I am rather proud that I made it almost 4 years in a Personal Property Tax Department.

I stand here today bloody, but unbowed. (And the OCD only finds an outlet when I am in Marshall’s or HomeGoods feeling compelled to straighten the shelves and put the matching dishes all together.) 

Princess Leia Cupcakes for former co-worker, Nate

 After nearly 4 years of stupid Excel tricks, battling the property tax database and endless filing, I desperately need to use my actual talents and skills. I have been trying to remember what I am good at and what I love to do.  People tell me I am creative (and I even believe this about myself.) But I don’t feel like I have been in touch with that part of me in a while. The closest I came in my last job was making birthday cakes for co-workers.

  

One thing I know for sure is that no matter how depressed I feel, I can always get a rush from fabric shopping. I look at my stash now and see things I bought with specific projects in mind. I just didn’t have time or motivation to put them together. I feel like there is creative energy stored in each piece of fabric and project I planned.  If I can just motivate myself to do them, I will be able to unlock that energy and find my way to the next job, or better yet,  what I want to be when I grow up.

There are piles and even bolts of fabric meant to be curtains, slipcovers, dresses, pajamas, stuffed animals…They are begging to be released from their stacks and storage cubbies. So I decided today is the first of 100 days in a row that I will make something. With a challenge like this, I should  be able to make a nice dent in that collection.  Hopefully I will gain momentum and retrieve the lost bits of my self.  By the end of the hundred days, I should be back to my regularly scheduled fabulosity. Even if it will be the bleak midwinter by then.

I predict there will be lots of sewing, but “making” is broad enough to include all sorts of things.  It could be a “mix cd” or a Christmas ornament or even traditional German springerle cookies. I have lots of things in mind, but if you have any suggestions or requests, please let me know.  I feel I should warn you that there are a lot of pajama bottoms waiting to be made.  Hopefully I will get it together and plow through them in a few days, mail them out to their intended recipients and then move on to some more varied projects. 

 

Raggedy Lily and Raggedy Maggie

At the very least, I will post photos of my accomplishments.  Hopefully I will even have a story to tell to go along with the pictures.  I am considering putting together tutorials if I cook up something that would be fun to document step-by-step. So that’s the plan.  

Here is today’s creation. 

Day ONE. 99 days to go. 

I have been working on these on and off for the last couple of weeks.  I have a raggedy Raggedy Ann doll that was given to my parents for me before I was even born. So I made Raggedy Lily (the blonde in pink) for my niece Lily and Raggedy Maggie for my brown-haired niece Maggie who loves BLUE.

Tomorrow I intend to experiment with something new for me—polymer clay….See ya back here then! 

Here are all the dollies together.